Phi 3 Medium 14B needs ~15.1 GB VRAM. MacBook Air M3 24GB has 17.3 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~9 tok/s.
Operating mode
Interactive favors responsiveness, while light API and scale-out lean harder on serving readiness. The fit stays the same, but the recommendation lens changes.
Current mode
Balanced
Balanced for general local use. Keeps the ranking neutral across personal and serving workflows.
Select quantization to explore
Fit status
Tight fit
Decode
8.6 tok/s
TTFT
22618 ms
Safe context
28K
Memory
15.1 GB / 17.3 GB
This setup is broadly balanced for this model.
Shared-memory contention still exists
The OS, browser, and inference runtime all compete for the same physical memory pool, so real-world headroom is less forgiving than raw capacity suggests.
| Workload | Grade | Fit | Decode | TTFT | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat | B | Runs well | 8.6 tok/s | 12337 ms | 28K |
| Coding | B | Tight fit | 8.6 tok/s | 22618 ms | 28K |
| Agentic Coding | B | Runs with offload (needs ~0.4 GB host RAM) | 7.8 tok/s | 36029 ms | 28K |
| Reasoning | B | Tight fit | 8.6 tok/s | 26730 ms | 28K |
| RAG | B | Runs with offload (needs ~0.4 GB host RAM) | 7.8 tok/s | 45036 ms | 28K |
How Phi 3 Medium 14B (14B params) fits at each quantization level on MacBook Air M3 24GB (17.3 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_K | 2 | 5.5 GB | Low | B60 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 6.9 GB | Low | B61 |
NVFP4 | 4 | 7.8 GB | Medium | B62 |
Q4_K_M | 4 | 8.5 GB | Medium | B62 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 10.1 GB | High | B62 |
Q6_KBest for your GPU | 6 | 11.5 GB | High | B62 |
Q8_0 | 8 | 15.0 GB | Very High | F0 |
F16 | 16 | 28.7 GB | Maximum | F0 |
Copy-paste commands to run Phi 3 Medium 14B on your machine.
Run
ollama run phi3:mediumOpciones de mejora
Añade margen de memoria para más contexto y para que el modelo envejezca mejor.
~$799 MSRP
Añade margen de memoria para más contexto y para que el modelo envejezca mejor.
~$1,099 MSRP
Sube la velocidad estimada de decodificación alrededor de un 171%.
Añade margen de memoria para más contexto y para que el modelo envejezca mejor.
~$1,599 MSRP
RTX A4500 20GBMayor saltoSube la velocidad estimada de decodificación alrededor de un 630%.
~$2,000 MSRP
Yes, MacBook Air M3 24GB can run Phi 3 Medium 14B with a B grade (Tight fit). Expected decode speed: 8.6 tok/s.
Phi 3 Medium 14B (14B parameters) requires approximately 15.1 GB of memory with Q4_K_M quantization.
The recommended quantization for Phi 3 Medium 14B is Q4_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.
On MacBook Air M3 24GB, Phi 3 Medium 14B achieves approximately 8.6 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 22618ms using Q4_K_M quantization.
For coding workloads, Phi 3 Medium 14B on MacBook Air M3 24GB receives a B grade with 8.6 tok/s and 28K context.
On MacBook Air M3 24GB, Phi 3 Medium 14B can safely use up to 28K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is 128K, but available memory constrains the safe maximum.
Not always. MacBook Air M3 24GB can often fit larger models thanks to unified memory, but a discrete GPU with dedicated high-bandwidth VRAM may still decode faster once the model fits. For this combination, the important distinction is capacity versus sustained throughput.
Paste this snippet into any page to show a live fit card.
<iframe src="https://willitrunai.com/embed/phi-3-medium-14b-on-m3-air-24gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>
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